Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh recently demonstrated a robot arm being controlled by a monkey using a neural interface. They were even kind enough to post recorded results to YouTube so we could all share in this moment of inter-species achievement.
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Robot Arm Controlled through Monkey Brain Interface
by Jason Patocka June 5, 2010
Documentary Tackles Human Gene Patenting
by Jason Patocka May 17, 2010
If you think you have legal ownership of your genes, you might want to take a moment to sit back, queue this documentary trailer, and hit play.
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Nanoscale Fabrication Continues to Scale Into Realms of Awesome
by Jason Patocka May 3, 2010
IBM published impressive news of their ability to create complicated geographical replica of the Earth with features as small as 15 nanometers in last week’s issue of Advanced Materials. When you wrap your head around just how small fabrication methods are these days, its easy to see why there is much excitement in Nanotechnology. Yes, you could fit thousands of these maps on a grain of sand but these feasts of chemical engineering have potential far beyond building microchips.
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Big Strides for Quantum Empowered Data
by Jason Patocka April 26, 2010
Considering the press generated this past year by cyber attacks on both corporate and Department of Defense infrastructure, encryption methods are in dire need of an upgrade. The policy wonkisphere has been brooding over this subject for some time now, as evidenced by former White House Terrorism adviser Richard Clark’s new (and controversial) book Cyberwar released earlier this month. Between the alleged China backed theft of Google’s password source code, to the decimation of Georgia’s digital infrastructure by Russia during their brief skirmish during the Beijing Olympics, robust quantum networks are tech who’s time is long overdue.
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Scientists Create Molecular Paper
by Jason Patocka April 14, 2010
Photo by Roy Kaltschmidt, Berkeley Lab Public Affairs
Next to grilled cheese sandwiches and classic Zelda, building blocks were quite possibly the best creation known to childhood. I remember spending countless days sifting through a giant tub filled with assorted blocks trying to find the ideal piece. These days, my RSS stream is filled with news of labs building systems that scale our concept of blocks down into the realm of atoms and molecules.
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Memristors to Replace Flash Memory in 2013
by Jason Patocka April 9, 2010
Imagine a world where you no longer have to wait to boot up your laptop. You simply hit the power button and you’re instantly back to where you were before you switched off.
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Meet Geminoid F
by Jason Patocka April 5, 2010
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5dJOAf2Dt98&feature=player_embedde
Robo-media darling Hiroshi Ishiguro recently held a press conference in Osaka demonstrating his latest android, aptly named Geminoid F. As Japan’s population ages there is great concern over who is going to care for the elderly. One proposed approach that has garnered considerable public attention is to create robots that can provide companionship and care for seniors. To this end, Ishiguro has listed the price for the Geminoid F model at 10 million yen or $110,000 USD.
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Mind Over Matter or Matter Over Mind?
by Jason Patocka
Reverse engineering of the brain is providing some answers in the hot field of Artificial General Intelligence. Previously we highlighted efforts with IBM’s Bluebrain project, but also of note is the work that Palm computing founder and TED darling Jeff Hawkins is doing with his work on Hierarchical Temporal Memory.
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Biomimicry Your Time Has Come
by Jason Patocka March 30, 2010
The American Chemical Society assembled its grand hive mind of chemists for the 239th time in San Francisco last week. Among the 12,000 presentations delivered across a wide spectrum of scientific disciplines, a presentation by doctors Tongxiang Fan, Di Zhang, and Han Zhou of the State Key Lab of Matrix Composites at Shanghai Jiaotong University highlighted a rapidly growing trend in chemical engineering. The group presented efforts towards designing renewable energy systems with a synthetic leaf, where the prototype would capture photons and use them to change water into hydrogen fuel.
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LHC Shatters Record, Enslaves Grad Students
by Jason Patocka
Geneva’s high energy physics juggernaut CERN shattered records and pushed scientists closer towards their quest to recreate the conditions of the Big Bang this morning. Reports indicate that the particle collider recorded nearly half a million events after three hours of operating at a mind boggling energy of 7 TeV. And that is just half of its proposed design energy.
That’s a lot of awesome.
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